The present invention relates to a cable assembly containing, a plurality of optical cable-units in a pipe. As used herein, a cable-unit is an element which can, in numbers, form a single cable, or which can alone serve as a subscriber's drop optical cable.
In an optical access system connecting a telephone office and subscriber terminals via an optical fiber, the adoption of an optical drop cable-unit as shown, for example, in FIG. 1 has been studied for use in making a direct connection to the subscriber terminals.
In FIG. 1, the optical drop cable-unit 1 is comprised of a unit formed by covering a core fiber, a pair of strength members 3 arranged astride of the core fiber and suspension member 4 with common covering 5 made of plastic.
As an optical drop cable-unit connection method, the following method is employed. An assembled cable 8 is suspended in such a form as shown in FIG. 2. The assembled cable 8 comprises a polyethylene pipe 7 formed integral with a sustainer members 6 and having a plurality of strandless optical drop cable-units 1 held therein. The pipe 7 is opened in such a position and a given one is led out of the optical drop cable-units 1 and dropped (connected) to the subscriber terminal.
In such an optical drop cable-unit cable 8, it is required that any given optical drop cable-unit be led out of the optical drop cable-units 1 held in the pipe 7. If, however, many more optical drop cable-units 1 are held in the pipe 7, too great a force is required for leading of the optical drop cable-unit, thus causing the leading operation to fail.